1984 Gator Bowl Recap

Friday, December 28

Jacksonville, FL

Oklahoma State University

South Carolina

December 28, 1984 | Cowboy Football

JACKSONVILLE -- After South Carolina overcame a 13-point Oklahoma State lead, the Cowboys stormed 88 yards to score the decisive touchdown on a bruising, 25-yard Rusty Hilger-to-tight end Barry Hanna pass play with just over a minute left in the game to hand OSU a 21-14 victory before a record crowd of 82,138 in the 40th Annual Gator Bowl.

Hanna, who scored his only touchdown of the season on that play, banged off two tacklers and carried a few more into the end zone with him as he tip-toed down the sideline for the game-saving score.

Earlier in the game, the Cowpokes bulled their way to a 13-0 lead. Freshman tailback Thurman Thomas, the game's MVP when he rushed for 155 yards and a touchdown and passed for a TD, leaped over from one yard out at the end of O-State's first possession. Then, early in the second quarter when it appeared the Gamecocks had stalled the Cowpokes at the Carolina six-yard line, Thomas took a Hilger pitch, ran right and suddenly stopped and threw back left to a wide open Hilger for the score. The conversion attempt was wide and it was a play to haunt the Pokes until Hanna's heroics.

Carolina regained the lead quickly in the third quarter on aerial bombs of 24 and 57 yards, but the rest of the time the stubborn Cowboy defense kept the Gamecock attack in a fog. OSU's final drive was endangered only once, that on a fourth-and-sixth situation at midfield, but Hilger hit the reliable Hanna for 13 yards to the Carolina 36. Hilger mixed up the defense beautifully by sending Thomas up the middle on a draw play for 11 yards and then came heart-stopping magic on the TD pass to Hanna.